Children Advocacy Centers (CACs) are the fastest growing community-based model for coordinating multidisciplinary investigations and modernizing and facilitating services for child abuse victims.
The first CAC was founded in 1985 and today there are over 600 CACs, with at least one in every state in the U.S. Although the development and leadership of these agencies is community-based, a national membership organization, the National Children’s Alliance (NCA), oversees an accreditation process where member agencies are required to demonstrate that they meet a number of key service standards.A recent Multi-Site Evaluation of Children’s Advocacy Centers project found a number of successes for CACs:
- Greater access of victims to medical exams,
- More involvement by law enforcement in sexual abuse investigations, and
- Greater satisfaction by the non-offending caregiver with the investigation process.
However, the results also highlight areas in need of more attention by CACs:
- Successful multidisciplinary team coordination varied widely across sites and
- There were no differences favoring CACs versus comparison sites on mental health service access for victims, satisfaction with the investigation for children, or criminal justice outcomes.
Cross, T.P., Jones, L.M., Walsh, W.A., Simone, M., Kolko, D.J., Szczepanski, J., Lippert, T., Davison, K., Cryns, A., Sosnowski, P., Shadoin, A., and Magnuson, S. (2008) Evaluating children's advocacy centers' response to child sexual abuse. Juvenile Justice Bulletin, 1-12. (CV136)
